Robert Klonsky
Robert Klonsky was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which fought on the side of the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to World War II.Biography
Klonsky and Walter Lowenfels were defendants in a trial in the mid-1950s of nine Philadelphia members of the Communist Party. They were convicted in 1954 of violating the Smith Act, which outlawed "teaching or advocating the overthrow of the American government by force." He served over a year at the federal penitentiary at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, before the Justice Department withdrew charges in 1958.
After 1958, Klonsky lived in California, where he ran a bookstore near UCLA and where he remained active in organizing workers in the film industry. His son Michael Klonsky also became active in politics, becoming a national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society and later leader of the Communist Party. Robert Klonsky supported jailed professor Angela Davis, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and had a few acting parts in movies. He and other survivors of the Spanish war were made honorary citizens of Spain in 1998.
Klonsky died September 7, 2002 in Chicago at the age of 84. His ashes were scattered off the coast of Barcelona.
